Horace Poolaw (1906–1984) was a Kiowa photographer from Mountain View, Oklahoma.
Background
Horace Poolaw, also known as Py-bo, was born on March 13, 1906, in Mountain View, Oklahoma. Poolaw was a notable Kiowa photographer and one of the first professional Native American photographers of the early 20th century. Poolaw's father was Gui po-lau, also known as Kiowa George, and his mother was Tsomah. The fifth of seven children, Poolaw was raised by a Kiowa family that was held in high esteem within the community, and his father was an important tribal historian. Poolaw had two apprenticeships with local photographers around age twelve and got his first camera at age fifteen. He did not make a living through his photography, but he did sell his photographs as inexpensive postcards while also doing a variety of odd jobs. In the mid-1920s, he married his first wife, Rhoda Redhord, and had a son, Jerry. In 1943, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces and served as an aerial photography instructor in Tampa Florida. He was honorably discharged in 1945. Shortly after, he moved to Anadarko, Oklahoma, with his second wife, Winne Chisholm, where they had three children: Robert, Linda, and Bryce. A car accident in 1957 left Poolaw unable to work, but he continued to make photographs until the 1970s, at which time his failing eyesight made doing so impossible. During the five decades in which he photographed the Kiowa People his primary subject, tribal cultures underwent profound changes, including the arrival of white settlers to the Plains, the division of tribal lands into farm allotments, and the disappearance of some traditional religious practices. He died in 1984.
Career
Horace Poolaw was a photographer during times of great changes for Native Americans. He was able to document these changes from inside his Kiowa community. His photographs differ significantly from photographs of Native peoples by non-Native photographers, like Edward Curtis, which often stereotyped Native Americans as a "vanishing race," or as peoples unable to adapt to modernity and whose culture was doomed to disappear. In contrast, Poolaw depicted Native people's day-to-day life. Most of his early images are portraits of his family, friends, and Kiowa leaders.
Poolaw sold some of his photographs as postcards, which were purchased by both members of the Kiowa community and tourists. These postcards are most similar to representations of Kiowa people by non-Native photographers. They depict Native people in outdoor settings, wearing "traditional" clothing, and edit out overt signs of modernity. Even while Poolaw created romanticizing portraits of Native Americans, he was also aware of how photography had been used by non-Native photographers to perpetuate stereotypes about Native Americans, and a large number of his portraits challenge these stereotypes.
Poolaw's photographs of Indian fairs, which he took both as an official event photographer and as a visitor, show Native Americans as both part of contemporary America and as proud of their Native culture. One example is his portraits of Indian Princess in fair processions, in which his subjects, who are dressed in attire that celebrates their Native culture, are sitting on cars, in front of telephone wires, and by shops. Poolaw was also able to capture the impact of Native children being taken into American Indian boarding schools as a part of the U.S. federal Indian policy of assimilation. According to family members, Poolaw said he did not want to be remembered for his photography, but he wanted his photographs to help his people remember themselves.
His times
Poolaw created photographs during four distinct periods of policy change for Native Americans, specifically Assimilation, Reorganization, Termination, and Self Determination. He had a unique gift for recognizing historic events as they happened. Poolaw was born in the middle of the assimilation period of federal Indian policies and only six years after the policy of allotment began to be fully enforced in Kiowa communities under the Dawes Act. Allotment required tribal lands be divided into plots of land for individual families or sold off. Other assimilationist policies included the creation of government-run Indian boarding schools and the Religious Crimes Code of 1883. Assimilationist policy was driven by the idea that Native American culture and tribal ways would disappear as Native peoples integrated into settler culture. Poolaw's photographs disavowed and disprove these ideas, showing Native communities as vibrant and thriving.